


The Curtain Rises

by Meretricious



Series: Acting The Part [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Canon Related, Case Fic, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Harry Watson, POV John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, POV Third Person, Pre-Slash, Sexual Content, Sherlock-centric, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7218598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meretricious/pseuds/Meretricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First fanfic, please bear with me. This is a mainly Sherlock POV gift fic fulfilling the request of doctorhooper which developed into a prequel for M/M case!fic series Going In Deep.</p>
<p>Sherlock POV post writing on John’s blog on 11th Aug while John and Mary are on their Sex Holiday. Also covers the aftermath of Sherlock's collapse post Leinster Gardens. Missing scenes. Sherlock and John get some things right and some things wrong. Very wrong! Harry Watson knows a thing or two and is mostly right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doctorhoooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorhoooper/gifts).



> Tags may change but please note that Mary is not nice, so if you like Mary this is not the right fic for you.

11th August.

You should not tell your friend how intensely you dislike his girlfriend. It is one of John’s rules that you are supposed to allow someone to go right ahead with an unsuitable, doomed relationship. Regardless of what little I can deduce of Mary I cannot tell John, who is happy with his choice to spend the rest of his life with his wife. I should not interfere. I should know how to be unselfish, after all, I’ve had the best teacher in the world. 

I can’t bear his face looking at me. I can’t bear it if he isn’t looking at me. Life stopped being simple the day John shuffled into Bart’s leaning on a walking stick. I don’t know whether to be utterly scathing with Mike Stamford for making presumptions (that very smug smile) or to thank him. I’m certain that he knows what he has done.

Looking at John’s blog I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to hack into it and write a post. I’ve been an arse again. Nothing new in that. 

I don’t know how to keep this together though, this friendship with John, now that he and Mary have their own life. 

Isn’t it just hateful not to know?

The flat is strangely quiet without John tapping away on his keyboard, the telly on during the day and some inane thing that he likes blethering away in the background. The flat is silent in the morning without the sounds of the shower running and the spoon clattering in the mugs as he makes himself a tea and my coffee. There’s no unguarded, open smile from him sitting at the table watching a video clip of cats falling off shelves. No more “Have you seen this, Sherlock?” 

The silence is interrupted for a moment by my text alert. John has just sent: “Why not have a look in the papers for an interesting case?”  
I have scanned the papers, all of them. Nothing is interesting. 

* * *  
12th August

I know John. There are depths to him that I can’t fathom, he never ceases to surprise me, but I know that he isn’t cut out for a quiet life in a twee flat with a twee lawn in in a twee neighbourhood and a daily round of listening to wheezing chests and taking blood pressure. I suppose that John is saved that with Mary doing the mundane work at the surgery. He could have had that life before but he chose to join the army because it wasn’t enough for him. He thinks it will be enough now? I should not feel cross, it is his choice.

He thinks that happiness is...I can hardly bring myself to form the words, ‘domestic bliss’, to resort to a euphemism, lots of it. Suburbia won’t suit him. I know what suits him, the mystery that rang our doorbell and ascended our stairs. The cases that presented us with the thrill of the chase. He glowed during our celebratory meals after we ran our quarry to ground. 

I haven’t seen him glow for Mary. Mary likes having everything her own way, baking her own bread, even the artisan baker’s shop on the street close to John’s flat cannot produce a loaf that Mary likes. It has to be done how she likes. John has to be how she likes. And John likes racing around chasing a criminal, the adrenaline high of victory. It is doing good as well, he says. That’s his idea of fun. I knew there was a good reason that I liked him instantly. We are not very different in our idea of what constitutes ‘fun’.

Damn Stamford. When is there going to be another case! Is John going to end up limping again? It seems possible since his uncle Ted missed the wedding with his “leg doing that thing again” Whatever that thing is. 

The research I did is unwelcome. Mary is having a massive strop. I would like to think that it is merely the hormones of pregnancy that are responsible for her anger but I am too cynical to convince myself of that. Mary is annoyed because I am talking to John through his blog. Easy deduction. John has said something that she does not want to hear. That’d be about me. It is a very clear message from her that I am not wanted. He is hers. I am redundant. His ex-commander. Like Major Sholto. Yes, we are alike James Sholto and myself. That’s what John likes. 

The day’s news is dull. The television holds no charm. There will be no more evenings of tea and the Eastenders, no more nights sitting in the dark with a DVD playing. Everything reminds me of what John and I did together and his absence reminds me that all of that is history. It is not late (at least not late for us. For me.) but my eyelids are heavy, all the same. I should drink three large glasses of whisky more often to disengage my brain sufficiently to sleep in this silent hole. John spiked my drink at that club on his stag night. Why did he do that? The warming amber alcohol has had an anaesthetic effect on me. Sleep would be welcome. The settee will do for now. 

“You’ll be dehydrated in the morning.” I can hear John telling me in his doctor’s voice, matter of fact, yet laced with the thread of caring.

“It’s only transport, John. Nothing that a glass of water tomorrow will not cure.”

It is comfortable with a cushion under my head, lying on my back with my eyes closed. I can visualise John standing there beside me, as he has done many times. I know he has done so because I have heard him breathing. His breathing changes from regular through his diaphragm to shallow in his chest. Standing there for longer than strictly necessary as if he deems it safe to look at me when I seem to him to be unaware of his gaze. 

Walking to my bedroom has no appeal in case I start to wake up again. I’ve had enough of thinking about John and Mary immersed in their wonderful life without the threat of a man of dubious morals stealing John away from her for a precious moment. She won, easily, because I let her. Let her carry on thinking that. Yes, let…

Damp, cold night air and my lungs are burning from running for my life. The green and brown aroma of the forest lingers in my nostrils but is overlaid with the acrid odour of burnt gunpowder. The orders are clear. These soldiers are to stop the intruder, capture him alive and return him for interrogation to the compound. 

“Šta ste vi radili ovde?” 

“What are you doing here?” This Serbian soldier wants to kill me but he cannot. That is against his orders. That’s good. It’ll get painful but I’ll be alive and that’s good. I can get out of this. Serbia. This is the last cell of Moriarty’s web. The last outpost of his operations in Europe. I can get out of this and go back to John and 221B. Think of that. Blot out the noise of the helicopter, ignore the searchlights, disregard the dogs straining at their leashes. Feel the soft leafmould beneath my knees not the turbulent wind of the downdraft whipping my hair against my cheeks, lashing in my eyes. Do not feel fear. Think. Get my breath back. Think of being Sherlock Holmes the way John thinks I am. Brilliant, perceptive, and with a plan for every eventuality. That’s how John sees me, that’s what I have to be to get out of this.

“Ko si ti?”

“Who are you?” Your downfall.  
For smirking I get a fierce open handed slap across my cheek, hard enough to bring water to my eyes. I hope it hurt the soldier’s hand. 

“Sherlock!” That’s John’s voice. Concerned. His voice rises in pitch when he is anxious. We are just players on a stage making our little entrances and exits, John. It isn’t the final curtain, yet. 

The back of the mud-splattered, grey truck crowded with grey, woollen uniforms reeks of fear, sweat and testosterone. Best not to let the soldiers know that I understand the orders being barked as I am shoved into the main building and the guards take me to a room. It is an interrogation room. The lean, muscular six footer is eyeing me with a confidence that I do not like. His eyes are blue, cold and hard. A cloud of data forms swiftly buzzing around him like flies around a rotting corpse. I see ‘liar’ and ‘commander’. 

He is playing the role of bargainer, the one that tells me that he cannot stop the brute intent on breaking my ribs if I don’t tell them what they want to know. He will promise me water, food and sleep if I answer his questions. He lies. I’ll see him in hell before I answer any of his questions.

“Sherlock? Tell me you have a plan.” John’s voice in my head.  
Of course I have a plan, John. Say nothing, wait until I have been beaten to a pulp… 

“For god’s sake, Sherlock, that’s not a plan.”

Of course you don’t approve, John. I would not expect you to.  
Wait until I have been beaten to a pulp, memorise the corridors, then they will post the youngest, least useful man as a guard on the door, a guard young and naïve enough to bring me a drink of water. 

The interrogation is not over in the small room with a greasy, brown tiled floor, the cobwebbed window admits little light filtered by trees giving a greenish tone to the yellowed plaster walls. The room was a cold store. Cold and spartan with hooks for hanging meat on. John was right. He foresaw the shackles and the chains. I am the meat being put through the grinder. 

“Now, listen to me!” 

Hello, Molly. Come to help me?

“What do you have to do? What are they going to do if you don’t open your eyes?” 

If they think I am asleep or out cold they will throw a bucket of cold water on me again. 

“Then you’ll die of hypothermia. Open your eyes.” 

There are laced army boots visible at my feet as my eyes crack open into slits. My jaw is grasped forcing me to look at the door. There is foul laughter as the iron door is pushed open and the rusting hinges complain noisily. The final curtain. I’m sorry, Molly. Lestrade, dear Mrs Hudson. So much left unsaid. A thousand apologies, goodbye, John. 

Mary! Her wedding dress flows behind her as she hitches it up to walk in. She has very small feet.  
“It’s all your fault, Sherlock. We were happy but you had to ruin that. John wouldn’t talk to me.” Mary’s tone is one of disgust, her nose is wrinkled. “And now he can’t talk to me because he’s dead. It’s your fault, Sherlock, all your doing, because you won’t talk.”  
I surge forward with the last of my strength, the manacles cutting into my wrists. “NO!”

No, this is Baker Street. I’m awake with a lurch, my heart racing, feeling sick and clammy cold. 

* * *  
13th August

The impertinent sun has carried on as if nothing has happened. Predictable. The curtains can stay closed. 

There is a light, persistent knock on the door. “Ooh hoo? Sherlock? It’s rather dark in here.” 

“Yes, Mrs Hudson, very astute of you.” 

She pulls back the curtains with a rattle setting a million dust motes swirling in the draft. Detritus. Foolish to look at her for behind her the sun pours in. My eyes squint with the harshness of the light. My head hurts. I have sunglasses somewhere. I may need them. Mental note not to indulge in whisky like that again. Self-inflicted pain. Indulging in self-pity. Facing that Mary has torn John away from me.

Why can’t Lestrade call me to a nice murder. It doesn’t have to be a murder. I’d take a four. Cancel that. I can’t take a four, I have a reputation to rebuild for taking cases that cannot be solved through the normal channels. If John has done nothing else with his dramatic nonsense, he has made me famous. Not me, William Sherlock Scott Holmes, but Sherlock Holmes, the detective with the ear-flap of death hat.

Mrs H. has gone into the kitchen. I cannot help but glance at John’s chair. Empty, uninhabited. Last filled with a very inebriated John, contented, relaxed, snorting with amusement. Slowly slipping off the edge of the seat. His hand on my knee without thinking, his brain working at a speed so slow that it took him several seconds to notice where his hand had unconsciously gone. A befuddled little ‘so, what’ shrug. Indeed. So what if my flatmate and friend harbours unconscious desires that are inappropriate for flatmates and friends? Or is that all in my head? I do not know.

Not interested in scrambled egg and toast. Mrs Hudson’s offering sits congealing on the plate on the table as I shower.

It would not happen, but if it did, how would John look flushed with desire? John, quietly confident, looking at my body with a blatant mixture of hunger and appreciation. Gentle, a seductive, gentle firmness that I cannot resist. Myself (blushing) swelling with the knowledge that John loves to look at me. How inappropriate is that! How my body betrays my thoughts.

I cannot touch myself because my thoughts will run away with me again. I will imagine him breathing shallowly and quickly, licking his lips as his eyes, roaming my naked body, turn a dark steel blue. Eyes unapologetic for savouring every line as I drink in every contour of muscle on his body. I know that he would be an unselfish lover until, finally, his own need compels him to take what he needs. He would be putty in my hands when he has driven me to distraction and I take as I give.

My head is down, my eyes fixed on my toes, the hot water pounds down onto my neck and shoulder blades as I lean forwards, my fingers spread wide, my palms flat against the cool tiles. Washing away thoughts of things that were never meant to be. 

Consulting my phone, which needs charging, I have no more texts. My laptop is still open at the last (my) post on John’s blog. What’s wrong with them all that a Sex Holiday is more interesting than solving an attempted murder? Does nobody want to know how John helped me to solve those two cases that led to John saving two lives? I ask if anyone is interested. I point out that John would ask if he were here. There are no comments from John. I can only deduce that Mary had plans for today which did not include John getting on the internet. Why would he even text me when his time is taken up so thoroughly by his wife.

“I did warn you not to get involved, Sherlock.” Mycroft!

“I’ve told you before, little brother, caring is not advantageous.” The voice-in-my-head continues.

You being the expert in such things. 

The height of interesting today is Mrs Hudson offering to come up and play Cluedo. She comes upstairs a little slower than usual. Her hip is playing her up, obviously, soothed with a drop of gin and tonic. The kind, motherly eyes fall immediately to the plate of gammon, egg, pineapple and chips where she left it. 

“You haven’t eaten a scrap.” Her tone is one of disappointment at my lack of appetite but it lacks any hint of reproach that I have rejected her cooking. 

“I set up the board.” I say, flicking my head to the coffee table. 

Mrs Hudson sighs. “They must be busy sightseeing.” 

“Sightseeing. A euphemism.” For having sex.

“Is it? I’m sure you swallowed a dictionary when you were little, dear.”

“That was Mycroft.”

“They must be. You know, I couldn’t believe it when John said he was marrying a woman.” She continues on her own track.

I find nothing to say to that. John has always dated women. Why would it surprise Hudders? I am back in Battersea Power Station. John is adamant that he is not gay, and loudly so, but he does not deny that we are a couple. At least not strenuously. Irene’s business was successful due to knowing what people like. She measured John up and I still do not think that she was entirely wrong. In fact, half the world was of the opinion that John and I were sleeping together. We were not, obviously. It would be no surprise if Mary also thought we had though. She does not like me in the least, does not trust me not to come between them. 

 

* * *

Two clients today. A woman of smart, harried appearance, has spent time developing her career leaving her husband with too much time on his hands. He’s having an affair. I watched her leave clutching the card of the solicitor that I recommended to her. I cannot fail to see a similarity between her and myself. Married to my work. I do not blame John for wanting to marry, to cleave to his wife and have someone there for him. He has a right to seek elsewhere all of that which I have been unable to provide. 

The other client has arrived late in the evening. Another woman, equally smartly dressed, older, just as harried.  
“Please take a seat, Lady Smallwood.” If she does much more pacing up and down the floorboards I may have to very firmly insist that she tells me immediately about this affair of the heart that her husband is party to. Oscillation is always a sign of a troubled heart and mind. She stops, glances nervously at me, and decides to sit in the empty chair before I seat myself in mine.

Her story is simple enough and my advice is to pay her blackmailer. Rather it is her husband’s blackmailer, but it is her career that will be tarnished if information about her husband’s long since defunct, under-age love affair is leaked to the press. For once it is not John’s blog that suggested my name. She does not ask where John is or mention his blog. Another thing that is different that I will have to become accustomed to now that he does not touch his blog.

“I have to get those letters back, Mr Holmes.” She sounds as desperate as she looks. There is more at stake than the cessation of her career. Her husband is depressed and suicidal. Save the life.

“Who holds these letters?” I do not need to ask how they came into the hands of a blackmailer. The more interesting question is why this secret has been sitting in the grubby hands of the purchaser of these documents for so long. The deduction is simple: the value of the forty year old secret is not for the value of revenge and the mischief it would cause or else it would have been a column of print in a red top long ago. It is not the wrath of a woman burning with a desire to unravel the marriage of the youth who rejected her, that would have happened soon after the marriage. The letters are a commodity that has increased in value at the rate that Lady Smallwood’s career in government has risen. Her husband is the subject of this assault but Lady Smallwood is the target of the attack.

“Charles Augustus Magnussen.”

Ah. I write his London office address in the notebook and agree to act as intermediary between her Ladyship and Magnussen, the newspaper magnate. John shuns reading Magnussen’s rag. I read it purely for the information therein. It has nothing to do with taste. Magnussen’s chief delight is in preying on people who are different. His readers are assured that they are the great and good while the target is unjustly belittled and misrepresented as inferior. The target today included an actress who slept with an actor. His career enhanced by his image of virility and hers ruined for being branded as loose with her favours. Mention of his fans who have sexual fantasies about him. No mention that his deceased wife ‘fell off a cliff’ under very dubious circumstances. Convenient for him that the only witness to the fatal ‘accident’, a youth grazing sheep, was found dead in a ditch that same day.

“He called it ownership. He does not own me!” Lady Smallwood’s face is flushed with anger. Her voice is steady but then cracks. “He’s disgusting.” She shudders, her hands, trembling and pale knit together. Her knuckles blanch to the bone as her fingers clench. Her bravery is quite admirable. She has fight in her.

“He spoke to you this evening, that is why you are here at this hour, he delivered his ultimatum and you came here immediately.” I state.

The tears in her eyes threaten to spill but she pulls herself together with a deep breath and merely nods shakily. There is more to this than her Ladyship is willing to tell me. Her words, the silences and the heavy, recent application of her perfume (Clair de la Lune) suggest physical molestation. Sexually charged molestation.

“Leave it with me, I will make the arrangements.” I say in my most assuring manner and show Lady Elizabeth Smallwood to the door. Her chauffeur in the hallway stands and escorts her out.

Lady Smallwood will scrub herself clean as soon as she arrives home. I, on the other hand, intend to get dirty. The probability of Magnussen selling those letters is so slender that a breath of wind would blow it away. I need to cast a fishing line to catch a shark, bait the waters that he swims in with a juicy morsel. Sherlock Holmes, brother of Mycroft Holmes, relapses into drug addiction. That should do it. But retrieve the letters too, save the life, remember. 

A little research leaves me huffing out a short breath as I find a familiar name connected to Magnussen’s rotten little empire. Janine Hawkins, Mary’s Chief Bridesmaid who happens to be Magnussen’s personal assistant. What sort of a blackmailer trusts a personal secretary but one who has complete control over her? Ownership of her. Nothing about Janine suggested that she had a guilty secret that her employer could suspend above her head like the sword of Damoclese. “Mr Holmes, you’re going to be incredibly useful” Janine said. Silly me, I thought she meant for finding her a boyfriend. That could still be arranged. It would pay to find out more. Time to find Wiggins, I think.


	2. Chapter 2

“John, the bathroom’s all yours now.” Mary shouts through to the sitting room. She knows that she looks beautiful with a tan, dancing out of my reach, as I pass her to get showered. I had no idea that I was so out of shape until the honeymoon. The list of places that Mary wanted to visit seemed to grow longer instead of shorter. I’m not complaining, it gave us something to talk about.

At least I don’t feel too bad for not realising that Mary was pregnant when she didn’t know herself. Trust Sherlock to have deduced it. He has no idea that Mary would have liked to have told me herself but that’s Sherlock. He doesn’t have such filters. I don’t mind if it’s a boy or a girl, I can’t wait to find out though when Mary has her scan. I should tell my sister that she is going to become an aunty but I dread to tell her really.

We have been back from honeymoon for a fortnight. Back to the grindstone. Sherlock hasn’t called. Mary has changed her song. There was a time when Mary encouraged me to talk about Sherlock Holmes, that’s a pale memory. His name is mud. It’s like Mary thinks he is an ex-boyfriend that I might be tempted to commit adultery with. I’m flattered that Mary thinks I’m so attractive that I could get Sherlock to break his inflexible rule about being married to his work. I thought Irene might have turned his head but she didn’t. Even if he was interested in that kind of thing, which I’m pretty certain he isn’t, it wouldn’t be with me. Yeah, it’s a compliment in a back-handed sort of a way. Not flattered that Mary thinks I might commit adultery. Haha with Sherlock, he wouldn’t even think about sex unless it was for a case.

“I’m going shopping. With Cath. There’s plenty in the fridge. See you tonight.” Mary’s voice, warm and carefree rings through our flat. She’s changed her tune from last night.

“Okay, have a good day.”

Mary makes her way out of the flat and closes the door before I have a chance to say more. There is no kiss. I can hack that she hates to be late for anything. I have no plans. I could go to visit Harry or drop into Baker Street but somehow I can’t bring myself to go. It would just look lame to turn up at Sherlock’s door. I’ve not missed the hell being deduced out of me either. So to my sister’s it will be. Harry is bleary on the phone, I’ve woken her up, she tells me that I can visit.

The tube deposits me along with the throng of shoppers, business types and tourists with rucksacks or suitcases onto the concrete. I have a short walk from here to catch the bus that stops close to Euston Square Gardens. The homeless network is out, one is leaning with his back to the wall near the Library, a brindle dog is tucked up close to him, both are sleeping. I could walk a little further, keep going to Baker Street but not today. Mary would take me to task about that. I’ll wait until Sherlock calls me. She can’t complain then.

The bus almost passes Harry’s door. She looks well. She’s not on one of her ‘I’m quitting the alcohol’ days but not on a binge either. To look at her, small, neat and bright you wouldn’t have the slightest suspicion that she is wallpapering over the cracks with booze. She’s still in pyjamas with a thick terry dressing gown around herself. Her hair tousled and sticking out like she didn’t get out of bed until I rang the door-bell. Her bell works. I wonder if Sherlock’s door-bell is in the microwave or the butter dish.

“I was going to have a lie in.” Harry pouts. “I was working until midnight”

Everything is my fault. It is my fault that she argued with our parents and left home because I had gone to London to study. I wasn’t there to pour oil on the troubled waters. Why do parents think that they have gone wrong when their child turns out to be a lesbian? Worse to my mother, a disappointment that she will not marry some nice man and make them grandparents. I disapprove of Harry pickling her liver over something that can’t be changed but I don’t approve of my father having that attitude to Harry either. 

“Sorry, I thought I’d just do a flying visit.” I reply. I sometimes think our parents took the wrong baby home when my mother left the maternity hospital with me. Harry is the living proof though that they didn’t make that mistake. We look vaguely alike, Harry thankfully got the better deal with the gene pool, finer features, paler blonde hair, china blue eyes but the same inquisitive nature.

“I’m making tea.” There is a faint smile this time.

“Yeah, thanks.” Harry has good taste in furniture, she can afford to have. Hers is a nice place, not showy, there is a pleasant view of a patio garden. The sofa is one you sink into and I amuse myself by looking out of the French windows at the garden as Harry potters in the kitchen next door. It’s not a cheap area, I assume that Harry has gone freelance. Lucky she is good at her job and can pick up work to pay for a swish car as well. Part of the image in telly work, I suppose. Flash car and a nice house.

“How’s Sherlock? There’s nothing new on your blog. I suppose you haven’t had time, what with you being married now.” Harry asks, dragging me out of my thoughts.

“He’ll text me when something comes up.” I wish I was confident of that. It bugs me, Sherlock is out there somewhere and wherever he is something will be happening.

“Course he will.” Harry soothes.

Dammit. She’s no fool even when she isn’t sober, she knows something’s afoot. She brings in a mug of tea for each of us and sets mine down on a round, silver-plated coaster on the glass coffee table in front of me.

“You haven’t had a row with him, have you?” Harry asks, settling in a chair. “Is that why you’ve come over?

“No, no, we are fine.” I smile reassuringly. I’m not sure if Sherlock and me are fine but I haven’t come to talk about my problems. 

“That’s good.”

I know when my sister is being polite. Harry can tell a lie far better than I can. She told our parents that she was dating a boy when she was dating a girl and she got away with it until mum invited him for tea to meet him. That relationship broke up because Harry didn’t bring her girlfriend home at all. I feel guilty that I have come for something approaching sympathy. Maybe it is telling that Harry hasn’t asked how Mary is yet. 

“Tell me more that you can’t blog about. You know I won’t tell, John. Go on. Pretty please?” 

Harry can charm when she wants to. Not ready to blight her day with my news yet I drop my gaze to my lap to think for a moment. When I look up again Harry’s bright, shining blue eyes are still fixed on me. 

“Cats stay in bags. Scout’s honour.” She laughs.

“Funny you should say bags. Okay. You mustn’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

Harry grins. Charmingly. “You know I can keep secrets.” She admonishes me gently.

“Well, this woman came to see us. She thought her husband was having an affair because he was behaving oddly. If I say her husband is a big name in shoes and bags you’ll know it.” 

“Not Woolie’s” Harry snorts a barely supressed giggle.

“Not Woolworth’s.” I have to grin. Ready to drop the bombshell. Drama really should have been your first choice. That’s Sherlock’s voice in my ears. “Francesco Buscini.”

“Shut that door! Francesco Buscini? No way!”

“The same.” I don’t know where Harry gets these phrases from. I have to admit to being pleased to get this wide-eyed reaction though. “Sherlock usually just handles those in five minutes but this time something put him on the trail. It was a single blonde hair that had transferred itself from the husband onto his wife’s shoe heel. A new pair he said she couldn’t wear until he allowed her to. Sherlock had her take her shoes off. He was like a bloodhound, sniffing the shoes and examining them in great detail. Mrs Buscini looked as if she thought he was a nutcase.”

“Or a pervert. I’d like to have seen him doing his stuff.” She smirks.

“Well, anyway, Mr Buscini was going out while his wife was asleep so Sherlock followed him.” 

“Was he seeing the mysterious blonde?” She asks, leaning forward.

“Oh, no, he wasn’t meeting her. He was visiting a warehouse. It was empty, apart from a crate he opened.” 

Harry nods. “So?” She is perching on the edge of her seat, enthralled.

“So, when he left Sherlock called me to rush over there. He removed glass from a window, undid the catch and we climbed in. It was sweltering in there, like a greenhouse, Mr Buscini had space heaters going.”

“Growing pot?” 

“No, there was nothing in the crate, nothing like that. Then suddenly something scuttled across the floor and ran up the wall.”

“A rat!” Harry interrupts sharply again with a guess. 

“Er, noo.” She makes me laugh. “It was gecko. A little lizard.”

Harry’s face reads ‘as if anyone would believe that’. 

“Not just one, there were dozens of them all climbing the walls and stuck to the ceiling creepily staring at us when we shone the torches on them.” I enjoy the effect on my sister, her features stretch into a look of surprise and slight horror.

Harry’s head shakes. “That’s just mental. How the hell did they get there?” 

“Mr Buscini had a caller, a sales representative, that was the blonde girl. She persuaded him, well, he persuaded her, to sell him a crate of a new material to make shoes and handbags out of. Apparently. She said she had called at the wrong office and should have gone to another. To a rival manufacturer to offer him a sample, in fact. She showed it to Mr Buscini who then persuaded her to sell him a consignment. So, Sherlock knew that she was an actress from that. He was out before breakfast the next day. I got a text from him telling me to meet him in a café opposite a casting agency office. Sherlock came to meet me there dressed in black leather jeans that you would have thought he’d been poured into and signed himself up at the agency.

“Wow! He would have been hot. If it was hot weather.” Harry is attracted to women but it certainly doesn’t prevent her from knowing what looks good on people. Her work is all about making people look good in front of a camera.

“Er, yeah.” I shift in my seat remembering the length of those legs and... “He brought some of his homeless network with him to have a noisy punch-up outside to distract the office clerk while Sherlock stole in and searched the books. The clerk flew back in to call the police, unfortunately. Sherlock had the ledger and set me off running to a pub near Poland Street. He passed the book to me at the pub door just as the clerk came tearing down the street. He had a mischievous grin at that and belted off with the clerk chasing him. He loves it.” It feels good to be able to talk about Sherlock freely.

“And so do you.”

“It’s doing a bit of balancing things up.” I have explained that to Mary and my patience has worn thin to have to account for my actions. 

Harry’s mouth puckers, her lips jutting out. “That’s what I meant. Then what happened?”

“Um.” I take a gulp of tea. “The next call was to the blonde who confessed she’d been hired to act the part of a sales rep and interest Mr Buscini in a new material that looked like alligator but is wildlife friendly and half the price of the nearest thing. She said that her script was for a game show where the unsuspecting member of the public is secretly filmed. She told us she had no idea what was going on. She had just had a letter offering her the part and showed it to us. The ledger gave the game away to Sherlock who traced the fictitious job offer to Mr Buscini’s biggest competitor. It had been a set up so that Mr Buscini would lose quite a lot of money and, if his wife hadn’t come to see us when she did, her husband would have been reported anonymously for illegally importing lizards and cruelty to animals.”

“And he would have been made a laughing stock of in the papers as well. Are they okay now, the little geckos?”

“Mm, Sherlock took care of that. Don’t ask me how because he doesn’t tell me everything. He knows people.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Hmm. So, what aren’t you telling me?” Harry homed in on the reason for John’s visit. “What’s the news, unless you have come to see if I’m drunk or sober, and we both know the answer to that one.” She finished with a little snort.

John tensed on the squashy sofa. “Mary is expecting. You are going to be an Aunty.” 

Harry blinked her long, honey-coloured eyelashes. “Congratulations. You didn’t waste any time there.”

“Yeah, well, thank you. January we think. Early January.”

“It’s nice for you.” Harry attempted a smile as she got up and whisked the mugs away to the kitchen.. 

The bottle of white wine tucked in the fridge door shelf was tempting. Why is it you never trust me when you obviously have something you want to say. Why bother coming! She clinked the mugs into the washing up bowl and threw the teaspoon on top of them in irritation. As she walked back into the front room she found John staring blankly at the wall.

“John?” Harry’s soft voice made her brother start out of his thoughts. 

“I was miles away.” 

“You could have just phoned me to say you were making me an aunty. It’s not a fall out with your mad friend. Is the sex non-existent now or has it just got a bit sort of boring?” She asked, cross with herself for being irritated with John when it was the last intention she had.

“Don’t.” John warned, tight jawed.

“Ouch.” She replied, choosing not to be offended.

“Sorry, sorry. We had a bit of a disagreement last night. It was nothing, we’re fine.” 

Harry noticed John’s hand unconsciously scrubbing down his thigh as if doing so would push away thoughts that made him uncomfortable. 

There you go, Harry thought, after closing the door when John had marched off down the street. “Oh, John, lovey.” Her face crumpled. There’s trouble and you have to be there for John, you bloody, selfish git. Harry let the sudden tears fall as she scurried to the kitchen drawers fumbling through the mist for the packet of sticky labels. Her phone chimed as she wrote “Being strong for John” on a label to stick to the fridge door and then she poured the chilling bottle of white wine down the sink. Returning to the sitting room she looked at her phone, wiped her eye with the heel of her hand and switched the voicemail onto loudspeaker, sitting it on the coffee table.

“Hi, it’s me. You did great last night. I’ve got a contract for you if you want to work on Thor Bridge. Just a month. Emergency cover. Not great I know but Rucastle liked you. He asked for you, actually. Call me. Bye.” The normally smooth voice of Zed Thackeray, Harry’s contact in Thames Bank Transitions make-up department chirped.

Harry stuck two fingers up at the phone and pulled a face. Thor Bridge promised to be an audience puller on Sunday night television and a month’s work on it would keep the cash flowing. It would be some time before she could replace the car with what she had her heart set on. Sobriety would put her in a better position for when John decided to talk to her about his problem with his wife and the Aston Martin was the car she had fallen in love with. It would be red, or blue, but probably classic red. She rang Zed back. “I’ll take it but don’t expect me to butter him up, and kiss his ass, that’s all.” She sniffed.

Zed laughed. “As if you would!”


	4. Chapter 4

“Wiggins.” My greeting is necessarily quiet and short. It would be too high a risk to allow anyone to comprehend that I am anything but another dishevelled addict looking for a fix. Billy is trustworthy. He lounges in the thick oak doorway of the house peering out from under the hood of a jacket a size too large for him. The heather-coloured woollen jumper that he wears takes up only some of the slack.

The dilapidated building is without electricity and is unheated, the walls where light spills in from the doorway are inscribed with the spray-painted marks of the more resilient and the graffiti of the angry. As doss houses go it is by no means the worst of its kind. There is glass in the windows upstairs, the direction that Billy’s blue eyes flicker towards. 

The fraying hems of my baggy jogging pants, a size too large for me, scrape as they trail along the dusty concrete floor with every step that I take to the staircase. The wrought ironwork is in the shape of hearts and my thoughts stray back to John before I focus on the work again. 

There are two light sleepers one mutters unintelligible words in a language that I don’t know, the other shifts uncomfortably where he lies as I pad quietly down the central aisle. A third is still, the ammonia of stale urine and vomit rises from him in a pungent nostril-closing cloud. A mattress in the corner has been reserved for me. 

This is my fourth week of trying to avoid sharing my bed with Janine, who has taken it over, and of working my way round the doss houses. Magnussen obtains his information from the sewers, the scrawny youth who owns a phone too expensive and new for his situation in life where the debris flows underground, is the prime suspect. It is not only myself who has eyes and ears amongst the homeless in this city. I would feel almost guilty that I have excluded John from the Magnussen case so far. There is, however, nothing that John could have done. John will discover what I have been doing tomorrow morning because sitting there, in a stupor, on the mattress next to mine, is Isaac Whitney, the son of John’s neighbour. 

From the way the morning light penetrates the room from the window it must be close to eight. Isaac responds to John’s voice in an amused, incredulous fashion. John is less pleased to see me. His tight smile is only just the right side of murderous. While he pushes Isaac to the stairwell John lets me know his feelings and then rounds on me with stormy sea blue eyes thrusting himself into my space. He has a great deal of presence for a short man. He excels in terrifying the lower class of criminals with his quiet confidence of being capable of carrying out a threat. Quiet John is dangerous. His anger with me is vivid, loud and borne of frustration. It indicates to me that John’s feelings for me have not changed. It is not John that is keeping a distance of his own free will, it is Mary’s will to keep us apart. The fast blooming irritation I feel at knowing that Mary is manipulating John for her own benefit is almost palpable. The chipboard sheet blanking off the fire escape stairs explodes outwards with a satisfying crunch as it takes the full heat of my rising annoyance. John follows me down onto the bins and the car park where I am surprised to find Mary sitting in the car. I make a good show of yelling at John that he has blown my cover so that she believes I am angry with him. 

John is not settled. At Bart’s he is still tense because he is a moral man who harbours an unconscious desire to pack his bags. I have taught Billy a little too well for it is he who blurts out what he observes. What sort of nurse tells the patient it is his fault if his arm hurts for moving while she is bandaging it?

“An addict in need of a fix.”  
I am John’s drug. Let Mary think that his drug is action and danger, though, not me. Absences eventually turn gaps of time into an unbridgeable chasm. That is not a mistake I wish to repeat. If I play my part as the friend of the family John will always know that he has a room at Baker Street. If I consult her first before taking John on a case she will remain feeling safe and superior to me. No, you don’t know that I learned how to fold serviettes when on a case in a hotel, Mary, I make it easy for you to think that you can tell when I lie.


	5. Chapter 5

I can figure out when Sherlock has left me a message. My chair, which I am sitting in, is back in its place by the fireside. Sherlock thinks I’m going to need it. Here. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has deduced exactly all the other questions I have rolling around in my braincase. He has left me a clue. That’s what the bottle of my wife’s perfume on my side-table is, it’s a clue. What will bring me back to Baker Street is something to do with Mary. He has left me a choice to ignore my phone, go home, and live in blissful ignorance, or answer my phone. Is it a choice? Really?

 “It’s Sherlock, John. It’s Sherlock.” Mrs Hudson insists that I answer my phone. She doesn’t know the enormity of the decision I have to make first.

“John! You have to answer it!”

 I have to choose Sherlock or Mary. In the end it is a surprisingly easy choice to choose a side.

He knows I’ll answer my phone. That’s why my chair is back in place. I attempt a smile at Mrs Hudson and take my mobile from her. Without hesitation I press it to my ear.

 “Sherlock.”

 “John.”

 The instructions are clear and precise. He will not discuss it on the phone, other than to tell me to put on my coat and grab a taxi to Leinster Gardens. For a moment I wonder if Sherlock is quite right in his mind then I remember that there is always a method in his madness.

 The hotel on Leinster Gardens would be an obvious place to meet Sherlock. The door is brightly lit and flanked by trimmed conifers in plant containers. Too obvious a place for Sherlock, too ordinary a bolt hole. Too public. He’s not a man to run from danger. It’s a trap or a secret meeting, I don’t know.

 The remainder of the street looks unremarkable to me as I loiter to find my bearings. A row of identical houses holding each other up with a party wall. Then a sudden flash of light illuminates the dim thoroughfare. I can feel my jaw drop as I make out the wedding photograph of my wife being projected onto the front face of numbers twenty-three and twenty-four. I can’t see where the projector is hidden.

 “That works.” Sherlock says in his soft baritone at the crack of the doorway before he disappears inside again.

 He’s operating the projector, that’s obvious as the short path to the door is plunged back into darkness. “Done as you said. Do you want to explain what all this is about?” I can’t hide that I’m slightly breathless with trepidation.

 “Not really” Sherlock replies biting his bottom lip.

 That is the truth. That’s Sherlock keeping something back as if his lips will allow words to tumble out if he doesn’t control them. His words will hurt me and for all his lack of tact and timing I believe that is the last choice he would make.

 “You shouldn’t be out of hospital, have you seen yourself?” The doctor in me rises at the sight of my friend as pale as the Egyptian cotton bed sheets that Mrs Hudson washes and I hang on the dryer out in the back yard.

 “A little short of home comforts here. Only room for one chair.” Sherlock escorts me through to the narrow corridor that runs along the rear of the false frontage. My left fist clenches and then my fingers flex when they tingle and my instinct is to quell the movement.

 At the end of the corridor is one of the hospital’s wheelchairs.

“Put you coat collar up, ruffle your hair and prepare for a visitor. Don’t move, don’t speak, just sit there. No matter what, make no sound at all.” Sherlock nods over to the wheelchair.

 “Where will you be?” I need to know because I can almost smell the danger. At least fluffing up my hair has given me something to do.

 “Out of sight. You won’t be seen in the dark, at least not properly.”

 Sherlock considers speaking for a moment and all I can think is that he’s utterly mad to be shifting bloody chairs and doing a bunk from the hospital. Not mad, driven by urgency. I sense that there is a ticking clock counting down to what must be an explosive meeting.

 “You’ll be seen as an outline. A shape.” He adds.

 “You’re setting a stage. For...”  I hesitate to say what I’m thinking and my words just trail off unfinished. He is expecting drama as he pops his collar. “For Mary.” I spit it out decisively.

Truthfully, I don’t want to believe that my wife has shot my best friend, put him a hair’s breadth between life and medically pronounced death. I trust him though so that denies me the room to do anything other than believe it.

“Yes.” Sherlock is terse with the effort to control the pain. “Yes, I am.”

 I know what it feels like, being shot, it isn’t something that you forget easily. Pain peeling thin strips of empathy away like grated zest. I can tell how grim my face looks because he is trying to instil confidence.

“I’ve led her here, Billy outside on the corner will give her a phone. I estimate that we have no more than three minutes before Mary arrives.” Sherlock says.

 I nod, struck dumb. I need those few minutes to seat myself on the wheelchair and prepare for the unknown. It cannot be too quickly for me that Mary turns up either. Sherlock’s face has gone from white and dry to grey and sweaty as I make the about face turn on my heel. I’m passing myself off as Sherlock, to sit here in the dark and wait to hear why. I know why, of course I bloody know why. I know what Mary has done. I want to know why she’s done that, and I want to know where she learned to fire a gun. At people.

 Sherlock’s phone beeps when Billy alerts him that Mary has the phone in her hand and it sends my heart onto overtime, banging against my ribcage. She looks so normal as she creeps in and becomes bolder. All I get is her half of the conversation with Sherlock concealed in the dark in a small storage room once used by the railway-men in the days of steam trains venting as they exited the fume-filled tunnel.

 Mary is venting her chagrin. I’m not sure what he’s said to taunt her into pulling the handgun out. This isn’t a time to be amazed by him as the cartridge case ejects from the P226 ready equipped with a silencer clasped in her hand. The spent case clatters to the concrete as the fifty-pence piece is halted in its trajectory. I want to move for the third time in what seems to be an hour but I’ve trained for a decade to hold my position under fire. My army training saves me from responding to the impulse to recoil in horror and it saves her from my immediate wrath.

“Baker Street, now.” Sherlock finally orders.

I don’t trust myself to say a word. Not even sure I can find words yet.

 

It isn’t much better back at Baker Street where I wonder just how much one life, mine, can be blighted. Until Sherlock collapses and sinks into my arms. Every fibre of my being strains to help Sherlock until I have to relinquish care of him to the best help in the room which is the ambulance team. I still don’t know who Mary is except she is the woman I’ve married. I push past her to go to the hospital in the ambulance anxious that Sherlock should know I haven’t left him on his own. Leaving my wife, whose name I don’t even know, to fight in Sherlock’s corner, leaving her to go home on her own. Leaving her. She’s a client. That’s all she is. Because I don’t know who she is only what she is.

 

The thing about an emergency is that it takes away every concern you have of your own. The moment we wheel Sherlock into the hospital is the same moment that he is taken away from me. I want to go with him but it’s not possible and it’s not wise. They have to be allowed to take over and wheel Sherlock away to save his life.

 So then I stand with feet of clay and nothing to do in the hushed murmur of the blue linoleum floored triage area as alone as anyone can possibly be with my thoughts suddenly rushing at me. Must phone Mycroft. Then wait. It’s either going to be a long night if Sherlock pulls through or a very short one.

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The next time John speaks to Harry is on the phone from the steps of Aldermere Hospital. Harry becomes breathless with relief when she hears that her brother’s best friend is recovering from a relapse from doing too much, too soon after a work related injury. “I’ll be at Baker Street after they let him out, maybe tomorrow.” He tells her.

A fortnight later John phones again asking if he can come over. With Sherlock. Sherlock wants to talk to her. Harry almost drops her phone in surprise.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for wonderful comments which spurred me on to write the sequel to this 'Going In Deep'


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